Everything in the garden is rosy

It’s lashing down outside after a month of wall to wall sunshine, practically unknown in Ireland, so instead of spending hours watering, watering everywhere, I’m sitting on my arse to write about it. Why don’t we have a watering system? Well, we did, but the dogs ate it. We got another one, and the dogs ate that too.

The life of a horticulturist can be hard!

The months of sunshine have been bliss though, and everything’s had a growing spurt. Above is my dome full of life and food.

My petite gris de rennes melon plant seems to be growing six inches a day. What do you reckon to my homemade trellis? Impressive, eh?

And look at these onions, almost ready for storage. I have several hundred more planted outside to get us through the winter.

I pulled some of the garlic too early, so it hasn’t formed cloves yet. Oh well, I live and learn.

If you haven’t tasted purple gooseberries, you should make it your business to do so, immediately if not sooner. They’re like manna from heaven.

We have kale and spinach that got us through the winter and is still going strong

The grapes have already appeared, and look at those cute little tomatoes.

The strawberries (inside) are almost finished, but I already have kilos frozen for smoothies and the plants outside haven't even started producing yet.

And guess what...blueberries! After four long years of flattering them, cajoling them and playing Beethoven and The Smiths for them, at last we have blueberries.

Over in the greenhouse, the carrots, planted in February, are almost ready for harvest.

These potatoes self-seeded. They’re in flower, so we’ll have tasty new potatoes soon with lashings of butter.

I’ve planted about 15 more potato plants outside with the no-dig method. It sure saves an old woman a lot of digging.

^{They're under the straw!}

I have more onions drying here in the greenhouse. Once I get the onions into storage, I’ll use those beds for cucumbers and melons. We juice a lot, thus need large quantities of cucumber, melon, and carrot.

And so to my peas, my poor, poor peas, devastated by a horde of marauding galliformes who killed at least ten and maimed countless others after breaching the garden’s defences.

But being a former boy scout, I'm always prepared and had a second pea frame built entirely enclosed in net and impenetrable to chickens.

The life of a horticulturist can be hard, but it's never dull.

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